Certain refrigerator appliances include an ice maker. In order to produce ice, liquid water is directed to the ice maker and frozen. A variety of ice types can be produced depending upon the particular ice maker used. For example, certain ice makers include a mold body for receiving liquid water. An auger within the mold body can rotate and scrape ice off an inner surface of the mold body to form ice nuggets. Such ice makers are generally referred to as nugget style ice makers. Certain consumers prefer nugget style ice makers and their associated ice nuggets.
Ice nuggets are generally stored at temperatures above the freezing temperature of liquid water to maintain a texture of the ice nuggets. When stored at such temperatures, at least a portion of the ice nuggets will melt to liquid water. Generally, liquid water can thus accumulate within an ice bucket of the ice making assembly. This may create a number of difficulties or undesirable conditions for the refrigerator appliance. For instance, some of liquid water every freeze, causing portions of the nugget ice to clump together such that dispensing ice nuggets is difficult. Moreover, liquid water may damage or negatively affect performance of electrical components, such as motors. Furthermore, the liquid water may be difficult to remove and, in some instances, drip or flow from an ice dispensing portion of the refrigerator appliance.
Although some existing systems have attempted to reuse melted water within an ice making assembly (e.g., in order to make new ice nuggets), difficulties with such systems still exist. For instance, it may be difficult to ensure that liquid water from melted ice nuggets does not carry or include undesirable elements, such as, for instance, sediments, dirt, bacteria, etc. Moreover, attempting to filter such undesirable elements from the liquid water may require significant energy demands (e.g., from one or more pump systems or electrically activated filtration systems).
Accordingly, it would be useful provide a refrigerator appliance or ice making assembly addressing one or more of the above identified issues. In particular, it would be advantageous to provide a refrigerator appliance or ice making assembly with features for managing or filtering liquid water from melted ice nuggets.